When Is a Ban Not a Ban? When It’s Not Enough

By FrackBusters NYJanuary 1, 2015

FrackBustersNY recognizes Governor Cuomo’s announced “ban” (more accurately an extension of the moratorium) on high-volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF) in New York State as a step forward. However, we caution against celebration without examination.For three critical reasons we encourage avery different strategy toward protecting people, our communities and environments from the corporate industrial assaults of this extraction technology.First, reversal of the “moratorium” is very possible. This policy of the governor and his Department of Environmental Conservation is vulnerable to reversal should they decide to weigh the scientific information differently in the future — and that decision could be influenced by any number of political or other factors. Also, the moratorium could be overturned as a result of a judicial decision should its legality be challenged, or a new executive could simply nullify this recent action. (Cuomo won’t be in the governor’s seat forever.)Second, the ban applies only to high-volume hydraulic fracturing which uses millions of gallons of chemically-laced water under great pressure in the fracking operation. But it still permits low-volume fracking up to 80,000 gallons (the “official” figure -- we’ve heard of volumes as high as 300,000 gallons being used). Plus, this temporary ban in no way addresses the relentless installation of supportive infrastructure required for industry operations: pipelines, compressor stations, waste disposal sites, water withdrawals from public supplies, gas storage, power plant conversions, export terminals, and more. These activities threaten land, people, and vital local economies with a host of unacceptable impacts as destructive as fracking itself.Third, there is the question of who should be making decisions about our energy future? We live in a supposed democracy. Only “We the People” possess authority to approve or disapprove an industrial undertaking and define its implementation. A moratorium declared by the Governor on the advice of regulatory agencies in service to corporate masters is neither democratic action nor democratic law. Democratic structures and processes must replace those of minority governance and the corporate class that rules it.FrackBustersNY believes it is the obligation of citizens to compel lawmakers and state government to enact legislation that values ecological systems and the common good. As fracking and related industrial activities are exploitive and degrading of nature and community well-being, we call for them to be made crimes in our state law, through the passage of New York Public Law 1. The people, the true governors in a democracy, must seize oversight of this assaultive technology from regulatory agencies and place it within the New York State Penal Code. Making convicted corporate criminals pay with mandated jail time and hefty financial fines will be a deterrent that current laughable, slap-on-the-wrist fines are not. (The $5,000 to several-hundred-thousand-dollar fines being levied on frackers that spill, explode, and leak — contaminating croplands, waterways, and air — are chump change to multibillion-dollar corporations.) We acknowledge that criminalization is not a fail-safe solution. But it places an additional layer of safeguard that strengthens New Yorkers’ rightful authority to say a meaningful “No” to all aspects of the fossil fuel industry that do great harm and hasten catastrophic climate change.Such democratic law gives expression to the sovereign right of people to govern themselves and to design an energy future in service to people and planet.